Jail for killer childminder

A childminder who shook an eight-month-old boy to death in a rage was jailed at the Old Bailey today for three years and nine months.

Linda Bayfield, of Addiscombe, near Croydon, shook Joshua Osborne so hard that he suffered fatal brain and eye haemorrhages and died six days later in hospital.

Mrs Bayfield, 54, claimed she had simply given Joshua "two firm shakes" in a desperate attempt to resuscitate him after he stopped breathing at her home in July.

However, the prosecution at the Old Bailey alleged that the motheroftwo shook Joshua in a fit of temper as she cared for him and five other children, including his fiveyearold sister Katrina, who suffers from cystic fibrosis. Joshua's mother Elizabeth told the court she had insisted her children should not be smacked or placed in a baby walker, which she believed hindered their development. However, the childminder admitted that Joshua had been in a baby walker when he stopped breathing and, she said, she shook him twice "firmly but not violently" to revive him.

As well as the fatal brain and eye haemorrhages, he suffered two broken ribs. In court Mrs Osborne spoke of Bayfield's "dark mood", and her fears that the childminder had failed to bond with her son.

When a tape of Bayfield's 999 phone call was played to the jury while Joshua was struggling to breathe, she was heard saying: "How am I going to tell his mum? I don't know."

The jury didn't know when they convicted Bayfield of manslaughter last month that she had previously been accused of actual bodily harm on another child in her care in 1986.

She was accused of smacking a two-year-old girl and charged with actual bodily harm but was acquitted at Croydon Crown Court after the main witness to the alleged attack died from meningitis.